Mirabelle's Boots - Chapter 5 (Patreon)

Was writing a FINAL CORE, but I wasn't happy with today's chapter. So here's a Mirabelle instead. New FC tomorrow! =)

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Mirabelle peeks through the window, watching the woman at work. A seamstress.

The fairy wonders, hanging upside down from the top of the window frame, as she watches the woman work; how does she do it? How does she make things from strings?

Mirabelle’s long, dusty hair hangs down beneath herself, swaying in the wind. Her hairs are like strings. Could she make clothes with them?

The fairy blinks, watching the woman for a while.

Or she could also just steal some fabric… “Hmm…”

She stays there for a while before vanishing, flying out into the city. She doesn’t feel great about having stolen the bread from the baker, honestly. Sure, she’s happy that she’s fed and energized. She had drunk some water from the middle of a small creek which runs through the side of a cozier part of the city. But she doesn’t want to steal things all the time. It’s an unfair trade. She gets something, but gets nothing in return. The mother-moon frowns upon such things.

Mirabelle stops, looking down at what she sees. A mound of garbage, piled up behind a vendor who is selling fruits and vegetables. She crinkles her nose. It smells. But down there, peeking out of the heap, she sees a tuft of fabric. The corner of an old, dirty burlap sack, buried beneath the trash. She could use fabric like this!

Ducking down into the alley, she grabs the sack and pulls on it. It’s wedged in between the heaps of trash and it doesn’t budge an inch. She frowns, looking around herself.

- Something knocks over a bottle to her right, down the alley.

Mirabelle stops, flying up into the air a few feet, observing the darkness cautiously. But she doesn’t see anything there. Maybe it was just the wind, playing tricks on her.

Waiting a moment to be sure, she flies back down and pulls on the sack again, turning her head once over her shoulder just as she sees thing pouncing out from behind an old box.

Mirabel yelps, darting to the side. The small cat just barely misses her, a lone claw swipes through her leg and rips along its length.

(STRAY KITTEN) has sliced (MIRABELLE) for {2} DMG !

Applied Status : [Bleeding {1}]

HP: 6/10

[Bleeding {1}]

HP: 5/10

She lets out a pained yelp, quickly flying into the air as blood drips out of her leg. The cat lands on a heap of old, collected bottles and knocks them over nosily.

*MREOW!*

“What the- ?” The fruit vendor turns around, looking at all of the old bottles noisily rolling everywhere. “Get out of here!” he yells at the cat. “Go on! Get! Scoot!” he barks, waving his hands at it. The cat makes an even bigger ruckus as it tries to run away through the collection of bottles, knocking even more of them over, making a relatively hasty and graceless escape.

(STRAY KITTEN) has fled from the battle.

Mirabelle hisses in pain between her teeth, looking at the gash. The cat had just barely missed her, but it still got her good. She doesn’t have much health to begin with.

[Bleeding {1}]

HP: 4/10

The fairy feels woozy. The world is starting to spin and her head feels light. Looking around herself, she unwraps the grass from her body and holds it against her pulsating, aching leg as she quickly flies off, trying to find the nearest body of water.

Cats are bad news. She hates cats. Human-people always have cats near them and the dumb things go outside of their homes and kill all of the birds and the frogs and the critters. They don’t even eat them, they just kill them. In that sense, they are the perfect companions for the human-people. They just kill and take without regard, following their instincts of consumption.

She hates them. Damn cats.

[Bleeding {1}]

HP: 3/10

There’s a small rain-barrel on a roof-top here that she manages to hover above, before the light leaves her eyes. Though, for some odd reason, the ground and the sky have changed places with each other.

Mirabelle falls down and plops down into the rain barrel, not asleep, but not awake either. She just kind of is.

[There’s something in the water]

Removed Status : [Bleeding {1}]

+ HP: 4/10

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The girl floats on her back, staring at the many stars that have come to greet her once more.

They twinkle with a kind light tonight.

She blinks, getting the goo out of her eyes. “Ow…” mutters Mirabelle to herself, just staying there for a minute. She looks down at her leg. It’s healed. She feels like she’s in good shape again.

- Her stomach growls.

Mirabelle sighs.

Food. The search for food is truly never-ending. Every time that she feels like she’s eaten well something comes up and in a few hours, she’s hungry all over again. It’s really troublesome, being hungry in a place like this. Fairies get hungry fast. They’re small and burn hot, so they go through nourishment like wildfire.

Back when there was a forest, it was easy to find food. There were berries and mushrooms and trees with good bark everywhere. Now there’s just… water.

The fairy dunks her head into the water that she’s floating inside of, drinking her fill of it. It’s rain-water, from the rain, so it doesn’t count as stealing. The human-people just put it into a barrel, but that doesn’t make it theirs. This is the rain’s water, so it’s fair for her to drink.

She grabs the side of the barrel, holding onto a small imperfection in the wood as she then flaps her soaked wings and rises up out of it, back into the air. Mirabelle realizes how lucky she is to be a grotto-fairy. Grotto fairies can get their wings wet without issue. But if a tree-fairy or a cave-fairy got their wings wet, it would be a problem. Their wings are far more sensitive and only work when dry.

The fairy flies out of the barrel, hoping to be alone and in safety, but, as if knowing of her wish, the cold finds her again, the wind.

Mirabelle hisses, clutching her body. She’s back exactly where she started. She’s hungry, cold.

The girl narrows her eyes. Stupid cat. Stupid human-people.

Determined not to go back to the tree in the park with empty hands, she grits her teeth and flies through the cold, back to the alley that is just next to the house.

She scouting it out from above. It looks to be clear now that night has fallen. The cat is gone. So is the merchant and so are just about all of the people in the streets, apart from a few wearing armor who walk in pairs down the roads every now and then.

A new burlap sack lays on-top of the garbage heap, having been thrown there at the end of the day.

Mirabelle smiles, finally having had some good fortune. The stars are on her side tonight.

Speeding down, she grabs a corner of it and lifts it out.

It’s too heavy. The sack is far too big, being meant for portions of food that are immeasurable for someone of her scale.

Mirabelle groans. Maybe she was too hasty with her optimism… maybe…

The girl stops, seeing something twinkle in the corner of her eyes. Conjoined light from the stars and the moon above beams down towards her, bringing a piece of broken glass to her attention. A shard, from one of the bottles that the cat had broken before.

Smiling for the first time in a while, she flies down and grabs it, returning to the sack to cut off as large a piece as she can feasibly carry all by herself.

(MIRABELLE) got a {Jagged}(Low quality)[Glass-Shard]

{Jagged}(Low quality)[Glass-Shard]

A small sliver of broken, green glass. It’s very sharp.

+1 DMG

{Jagged} 8% chance of applying status [BLEEDING{1}] to either the target or yourself with every attack.

Low quality: -25% DURABILITY

Weight: 0.16kg

Durability: 06/06

Value: 00 Obols

It takes a few minutes for her to work through the material of the sack, cutting a piece off and then it takes a few minutes longer than that, because of her constant, paranoid glances over her shoulder towards the darkness. But eventually, the fabric of the sack comes loose. Mirabelle throws the piece of jagged glass into the fabric, rolls it up into a bundle and then flies off into the night, carrying it back with herself to the tree in the park.

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Humming to herself, Mirabelle sits on the little tree-island in the park and washes the smelly sack-fabric that she had acquired in the pond. It isn’t even stolen, because they threw it away. That means it’s fair for her to take.

She smiles, looking around herself. The water will keep any cats away. This is a good tree. It always has been.

Getting up, she pulls the sack out of the water and onto the grass, straining herself to do so, given its new wet weight. Then, she grabs it and rolls it together into a tube, throwing her body onto it to squish out all of the water. Once she’s gotten as much out as she can, she carries it up to her tree and hangs it on a small twig, hidden behind some foliage so that she can work. She only needs a little bit of fabric to make a dress, like she had seen the old woman doing. The rest she can use for her nest.

It’s not soft. But it’s better than nothing and she feels grateful to have it.

Happy to be busy, Mirabelle sets to work, cutting at the fabric high up on her dark perch.

- Something quacks.

She blinks, turning her gaze to look across the pond, to the side she hasn’t really gone to yet. Despite it being the middle of the night, there’s an old woman there, throwing bread-crumbs to the ducks.

Her stomach growls.

Ducks are usually okay to fairies. They don’t bother fairies often… but she wouldn’t want to get between them and the crumbs either. They’re a good omen though. Ducks are strong, beautiful birds that like to stay in good places.

The fairy continues tearing off the fabric until she has a solid piece that she can use. Given the stringy nature of the burlap and the crudeness of her tool, there are a lot of frayed ends that she can tie together. Doing so and then cutting out two holes for her arms and a downward curve to let her wings stay free, she slips the damp sack-dress on.

Modesty is a bigger topic amongst human-people. If she’s even going to go near them, she needs clothes. But more importantly, she has something to keep herself warm now. Sort of. It’s not great. But it’s better than nothing.

(MIRABELLE) has crafted an {Ugly}(Terrible quality)[Sack Dress]

Unlocked: [Tailoring {1}](Sew)

{Ugly}(Terrible quality)[Sack Dress]

A small wrap, made out of burlap with holes on the sides and back. It’s damp.

{Ugly} -50% Value

Terrible quality: -50% DURABILITY

Weight: 0.11kg

Durability: 05/05

Value: 00 Obols

She frowns. ‘Ugly’?

Mirabelle lifts her nose to the menu-window, letting out an indignant ‘hmph’ as she turns her head away and sits down on the branch, continuing to watch the ducks.

“Quack…” she mutters quietly beneath her breath, watching as a generous handful of breadcrumbs flies out over the water, but none far enough to reach her or her growling stomach.

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Mirabelle yawns, leaning against the inside of the tree inside of her nest. She wraps a piece of the remaining bundled, scratchy fabric around herself.

She can’t sleep, obviously.

But still, there’s something… comforting about the act of just laying here, of being covered by something warm and obscuring. There’s something comforting about being able to just lie here and to think and then to have a phase of not thinking at all, followed by another phase of thinking. Thinking about her old life, thinking about her family who she doesn’t even begin to know how to mourn. Thinking about her situation and trying to decipher what exactly she ought to be feeling about it in general.

She had made a wish, a wish that the stars above had not only heard, but granted, with all of their heavenly insight and presence. But yet, here she is, lying in the middle of a human-people city, entirely burned out of her desire for revenge essentially overnight.

But the wish is still in place, the ‘deal’ is still underway, she’s still here and alive, after all. Even if she doesn’t really want to do it anymore. Mirabelle doesn’t know what it is exactly that she wants to do, now that she is alive again, except to continue living. She hopes that the stars won’t be mad at her for that. But… she doesn’t want to be like the things that hurt her and her family anymore. That was only who she was for a moment. She wants to be something better. She wants to be something that aids the natural cycles of the world, that belongs to them. Not something that drains and steals and takes.

Her fingers run through the burlap that she covers herself with. It’s scratchy and stiff and it smells a little less like garbage and more like pond-garbage now. But it’s hers. She earned this. She worked for this. She paid blood for this.

This is hers.

She stares at the piece of glass, sitting against the wall. Hers.

She wants more things. More things that are hers.

Maybe the human-people have something right? There are creature-comforts that help when one is alone, cold and vulnerable. Maybe she can get more of these things? Maybe she could earn more of these things? Softer things. Warmer things…

- Her stomach growls.

Mirabelle sighs. Food. She wants to earn food.

She has to find a way to reliably provide for herself here. She doesn’t want to just take. She wants to make things, to harvest them, to earn them. But how…?

The fairy stares at her reflection in the shard of broken glass as she spends the night thinking about a plan.